My name is Dave Stancliff. Walk down the road of life with me each day. You'll find news and my views. I'm a veteran, an independent thinker, and a former newspaper publisher and editor.
This blog is not about making money. It's a forum to share with. All views expressed are mine, unless I note otherwise.

Friday, May 27, 2016

How To Be A Hypocrite And Still Live With Yourself

Good Day World!The presidential primaries have been a case study for serial hypocrites.

The question is how do the hypocrites manage to live with themselves when they publicly flip flop on opinions for political expediency?Isn't it embarrassing?Apparently not. Remember last February when New York Republican Rep. Peter King said Donald Trump was "not fit to be president, morally or intellectually?"In early May he changed his tune and endorsed Trump. He's not the only example. There's plenty of others. As Trump's competition wilted Republicans who initially thought Trump was unfit to be a president faced a dilemma: willfilly embracing him would mean recognizing that their decisions about whom to support were opportunistic rather than principled.But here's the rub; they all wanted to be on the winning team. No problem according to psychologist Jeff Malet who said that the human mind has a built-in solution for problems like this: the whitewash.Malet explained in a recent article that when people are faced with the option to either stand on principal or gain advantage, people tend to do the latter.And if that means rewriting your preceptions, the mind is more than happy to comply while maintaining the illusion that you were doing what was right all along.

So if you're a Republican, Trump is now your standard-bearer, and the easiest way to come to terms with this fact is to lessen his sins. For example, if you were concerned by Trump's initial failure to distance himself from the Ku Klux Klan's David Duke, your mind can soften this blemish. That's what Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch might have done once he realized his favored candidates weren't likely to prevail; Hatch told himself, and the press, that "deep down" Trump doesn't tolerate racist organizations, he's just "inexperienced in expressing himself" about it.Guess what? You don't have to be a politician to be a hypocrite. They come in all shapes and sizes. Just remember to be prepared to spread lots of whitewash over the history your changing.Time for me to walk on down the road...